It is a world -renowned truth that the current scene dating back, regardless of the city in which you live. Everyone has a story. And everyone has a complaint.
Take Myles Slayton, who completed a banking practice in New York City and saw how he and his friends fought to find important others in the ruthless scene of the city. “We’re on our phones more than ever,” he told TechCrunch. “I thought of myself,“ Why do apps dating awesome? ”
He thought that it should not be a problem with the dating applications, per se, but the way the products work these days. Many of the popular dating applications have been built with Millennials, but its generation, Gen Z, works in a completely different way, he said. It is a return to how dating was: people of this generation meet “through the recipients, through people in our social circles,” he said.
She worked with friends Willy Conzelman and Carter Munk and just a few months ago started Cerca, a dating app that matches people with others already in their social circles. The company announced a $ 1.6 million seed this summer and already has people living: the application has about 60,000 users, mainly in New York and scattered in universities.
The company is part of the Battlefield Startup and will highlight its technology on TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 later this month in San Francisco.
Slayton, the company’s chief executive, said there is a reason Gen Z has fallen to old ways of dating, and this is due to the internet and the Covid pandemic. “You just don’t trust strangers,” he said, adding that people are also deeply afraid of rejection.
Cerca’s product is trying to deal with it. Users create a typical dating profile, synchronize their contacts, and from there, only friends or friends of friends already in the application appear as possible races. “The fear of foreigners is eliminated,” Slayton said. Everyone likes are anonymous, relieving the fear of rejection. Users take four swipes a day, he said, in the hope of getting rid of fatigue and putting more emphasis on choosing a race.
TechCrunch event
Francisco
|
27-29 October 2025
“There is no world where you have to see 100 profiles in a minute,” he said. “You really need to take a second to think of every profile. These are real people.”
The profiles first reveal common friends, then the background and then the photos. “It’s not all to look for us,” he said. A user receives a notice that someone has liked their profile, though they will not know who. The CERCA algorithm will enhance the profile of anyone who did the like to the food of the person they are interested in, who can then decide whether they will like it back.
Every night, races are revealed and no one knows who made the first move.
Occupation of friends audiences facilitates the vet for security as people can simply send a message to their mutual friends to gather the Intel about who they go on a date. Users can also choose what and how many contacts they want to share with Cerca, as well as prevent some people from seeing their profiles. “You can also filter words like a dentist, doctor,” he said. “There is no screen or screen registration. Security is primary for us.”
In addition to the online world, the company also created goods and hosts events.
Slayton said he and his co -founders decided to apply to Startup Battlefield and knew a founder who had participated in the event. “I think it’s such an opportunity to have the US and the world to see who we are and to represent dating to positive light,” he said.
If you want to learn from firsthand CERCA and see dozens of extra stadiums, watch valuable laboratories and make connections that drive business results, Proceed here to find out more about this year’s disorderIt took place on October 27 to October 29 in San Francisco.
